The function of morality is to regulate the activities of associated
life so that all may have what we call fair play. It is impossible to
think of morality aside from expressions of force, primarily physical
force. "Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear
false witness; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not remove
the ancient landmark;" and all approvals and disapprovals imply
that the act in question has affected or will affect the interest of
others, or of society at large, for better or for worse. And since
morality goes back so directly to forms of activity and their
regulation, we may expect to find that the motor male and the more
stationary female have had a different relation to the development of
a moral code.
As between nutrition and reproduction, in the struggle for life,
nutrition plays a larger rôle--in volume, at any rate--in the
life-history of the individual. A consideration of the causes of the
modification of species in nature shows that the changes in morphology
and habit of the animal which relate to food-getting are more
fundamental and numerous than those which relate to wooing. In a moral
code, likewise, whether in an animal or human society, the bulk of
morality turns upon food rather than sex relations; and since the male
is more active in both these relations, and since, further, morality
is the mode of regulating activities in these relations, it is to
be expected that morality, and immorality as well, will be found
primarily to a greater degree functions of the motor male disposition.
Tribal safety and the preservation and extension of the territory
furnishing food demand the organized attention of the group first of
all; and the emotional demonstrations and social rewards following
modes of behavior which have a protective or provident meaning for
the group, and the public disapproval and disallowance of modes of
behavior which impair the safety or force capacity, and consequent
satisfactions of the group, become in the tribe the most powerful
of all stimuli, and stimuli to which the male is peculiarly able to
react. This is not like the case of hunger and other physiological
stimuli which are conditioned from within. The individual acts for the
advantage of the group rather than for his personal advantage, and the
stimulus to this action must be furnished socially. Group preservation
being of first-rate importance, no group would survive in which the
public showed apathy on this point. Lewis and Clarke say of the Dakota
Indians:
What struck us most was an institution peculiar to them and
to the Kite Indians, further to the westward, from whom it
is said to have been copied. It is an association of the most
active and brave young men, who are bound to each other by
attachment, secured by a vow never to retreat before any
danger, or to give way to their enemies. In war they go
forward without sheltering themselves behind trees, or aiding
their natural valor by any artifice.... These young men sit,
and encamp, and dance together, distinct from the rest of the
nation; they are generally about thirty or thirty-five years
old; and such is the deference paid to courage that their
seats in the council are superior to those of the chiefs, and
their persons more respected.[185]
The consciousness of the value of male activity is here expressed in
an exaggerated degree--in a degree bordering upon the pathological,
since the reckless exposure of life to danger is not necessary to
success at a given moment, and is unjustifiable from the standpoint
of public safety, unless it be on the side of the suggestive effect
of intrepid conduct in creating a general standard of intrepidity.
Similarly, the Indians in general often failed to get the full benefit
of a victory, because of their practice that the scalp of an enemy
belonged to him who took it, and their pursuits after a rout were
checked by the delay of each to scalp his own.
The pedagogical attempts of primitive society, so far as they are
applied to boys, have as an end the encouragement of morality of a
motor, not a sentimental, type. The boys are taught war and the chase,
and to despise the occupations of women. Thompson says of the Zulu
boys:
It is a melancholy fact that when they have arrived at a very
early age, should their mothers attempt to chastise them, such
is the law that these lads are at the moment allowed to kill
their mothers.[186]
Ethnologists often make mention of the fact that the natural races do
not generally punish children; and while this is due in part to a less
definite sense of responsibility, as well as of less nervousness in
parents, non-interference is a part of their system of training:
Instead of teaching the boy civil manners, the father desires
him to beat and pelt the strangers who come to the tent; to
steal or secrete in joke some trifling article belonging
to them; and the more saucy and impudent they are, the more
troublesome to strangers and all the men of the encampment,
the more they are praised as giving indication of a future
enterprising and warlike disposition.[187]
Theft is also encouraged among boys as a developer of their wits. The
Spartan boy and the fox is a classical example; and Diodorus relates
that in Egypt the boy who wished to become a thief was required to
enrol his name with the captain of the thieves, and to turn over to
him all stolen articles. The citizens who were robbed went to the
captain of thieves and recovered their property upon payment of
one-fourth of its value.[188] Admiration of a lawless deed often
foreruns censure of the deed in consciousness today: there are few men
who do not admire a particularly daring and successful bank or diamond
robbery, though they deprecate the social injury done.
Formally becoming a man is made so much of in early society, because
it is on this occasion that fitness for activity is put to the test.
Initiatory ceremonies fall at the time of puberty in the candidate,
and consist of instruction and trials of fortitude. A certain show of
the proceeds of activity is also exacted of young men, especially
in connection with marriage, and the youth is not permitted to marry
until he has killed certain animals or acquired certain trophies. The
attention given to manly practices in connection with marriage is seen
in this example from the Kukis:
When a young man has fixed his affections upon a young woman,
either of his own or some neighboring _Parah_, his father
visits her father and demands her in marriage for his son: her
father, on this, inquires what are the merits of the young
man to entitle him to her favor; and how many can he afford
to entertain at the wedding feast; to which the father of
the young man replies that his son is a brave warrior, a good
hunter, and an expert thief; for that he can produce so many
heads of the enemies he has slain and of the game he has
killed; that in his house are such and such stolen goods;
and that he can feast so many (mentioning the number) at his
marriage.[189]
Occasionally the ability to take punishment is even made a part of the
marriage ceremony. At Arab marriages
there is much feasting, and the unfortunate bridegroom
undergoes the ordeal of whipping by the relations of his
bride, in order to test his courage. Sometimes this punishment
is exceedingly severe, being inflicted with the coorbatch,
or whip of hippopotamus hide, which is cracked vigorously
about his ribs and back. If the happy husband wishes to
be considered a man worth having, he must receive the
chastisement with an expression of enjoyment; in which case
the crowds of women in admiration again raise their thrilling
cry.[190]
A very simple record of successful activity is the bones of animals.
McCosh says of the Mishmis of India:
Nor are these hospitable rites allowed to be forgotten; the
skull of every animal that has graced the board is hung up
as a record in the hall of the entertainer; he who has
the best-stocked Golgotha is looked upon as the man of the
greatest wealth and liberality, and when he dies the whole
smoke-dried collection of many years is piled upon his grave
as a monument of his riches and a memorial of his worth.[191]
And Grange of the Nagas:
In front of the houses of the greater folks are strung up
the bones of the animals with which they have feasted the
villagers, whether tigers, elephants, cows, hogs, or monkeys,
or aught else, for it signifies little what comes to their
net.[192]
The head-hunting mania of Borneo is also a pathological expression
of the desire to get approval of destructive activity from both the
living and the dead:
The aged of the people were no longer safe among their
kindred, and corpses were secretly disinterred to increase the
grizzly store. Superstition soon added its ready impulse to
the general movement. The aged warrior could not rest in his
grave till his relatives had taken a head in his name; the
maiden disdained the weak-hearted suitor whose hand was not
yet stained with some cowardly murder.[193]
Class distinctions and the attendant ceremonial observances go
immediately back to an appreciation of successful motor activities.
We need only observe the conduct of weaker animals in the presence
of the stronger to appreciate the differences in behavior induced
by the presence of superior motor ability. The recognition of this
difference, as it is finally expressed in habitual forms of behavior,
becomes a symbol of the difference, while the difference goes back,
in reality, to a difference in capacity. This example from Raffles
illustrates the intensity of moral meaning which the appreciation of
achievement may take on in the end:
At the court of _Súra-kérta_ I recollect that once, when
holding a private conference with the _Súsunan_ at the
residency, it became necessary for the _Rádan adipáti_ to be
dispatched to the palace for the royal seal: the poor old man
was, as usual, squatting, and as the Susunan happened to be
seated with his face toward the door, it was fully ten minutes
before his minister, after repeated ineffectual attempts,
could obtain the opportunity of rising sufficiently to reach
the latch without being seen by his royal master. The mission
on which he was dispatched was urgent, and the Susunan himself
inconvenienced by the delay; but these inconveniences were
insignificant compared with the indecorum of being seen out
of the _dódok_ posture. When it is necessary for an inferior
to move, he must still retain that position, and walk with
his hams upon his heels until he is out of his superior's
sight.[194]
Drury says that a Malagasy chief, on his return from war,
had scarcely seated himself at his door, when his wife came
out crawling on her hands and knees until she came to him, and
then licked his feet; when she had done, his mother did the
same, and all the women in the town saluted their husbands in
the same manner.[195]
An examination of the causes of the approval of conduct in early times
thus discloses that approvals were based to a large degree on violent
and socially advantageous conduct, that the training and rewards
of early society were calculated to develop the skill and fortitude
essential to such conduct, and that the men were particularly the
representatives of conduct of this type. In the past, at any rate,
there has been no glory like military glory, and no adulation like
military adulation; and in the vulgar estimation still no quality in
the individual ranks with the fighting quality.[196]
But checks upon conduct are even more definitely expressed, and
more definitely expressible, than approvals of conduct. Approval is
expressed in a more general expansive feeling toward the deserving
individual, and this may be accompanied with medals for bravery,
promotions, and other rewards; but in general the moral side of life
gets no such definite notice as the immoral side. Practices which are
disliked by all may be forbidden, while there is no equally summary
way of dealing with practices approved by all. In consequence,
practices which interfere with the activities of others are inhibited,
and to the violation of the inhibition is attached a penalty,
resulting in a body of law and a system of punishment. An analysis of
the following crimes and punishments among the Kafirs, for instance,
indicates that a definite relation between offensive forms of
activity and punishments is present at a comparatively early period of
development:
Theft: restitution and fine. Injuring cattle: death or fine,
according to the circumstances. Causing cattle to abort:
heavy fine. Arson: fine. False witness: heavy fine. Maiming:
fine. Adultery: fine, sometimes death. Rape: fine, sometimes
death. Using love philters: death or fine, according to
circumstances. Poisoning, and practices with an evil intent
(termed "witchcraft"): death and confiscation. Murder: death
or fine, according to circumstances.... Treason, as contriving
the death of a chief, conveying information to the enemy:
death and confiscation. Desertion from the tribe: death and
confiscation.[197]
Similarly among the Kukis:
Injuring the property of others, or taking it without payment;
using violence; abusing parents; fraudulently injuring
another; giving false evidence; speaking disrespectfully to
the aged; marrying an elder brother's wife; putting your
foot on, or walking over, a man's body; speaking profanely of
religion--are acts of impiety.[198]
As the vigorous and aggressive activities of the male have a very
conspicuous value for the group when exercised for the benefit of
the group, they become particularly harmful when directed against the
safety or interests of the group or the members of the group, and we
find that civil and criminal law, and contract, and also conventional
morality, are closely connected with the motility of the male. The
establishment of moral standards is mediated through the sense of
strain--strain to the personal self, and strain to the social self.
Whether a man is injured by an assault upon his life or upon his
property, he suffers violence, and the first resort of the injured
individual or group is to similar violence; but this results in a
vicious tit-for-tat reaction whereby the stimulus to violence is
reinstated by every fresh act of violence. Within the group this
vicious action and reaction is broken up by the intervention of public
opinion, either in an informal expression of disapproval, or through
the headmen. The man who continues to kill may be killed in turn, but
by order of the council of the tribe; and one of his kinsmen may be
appointed to execute him, as under that condition no feud can follow.
But there is always a reluctance to banish or take the life of the
member of the group, both because no definite machinery is developed
for accomplishing either, and because the loss of an able-bodied
member of a group is a loss to the group itself. The group does not
seek, therefore, immediately to be rid of an offensive member, but
to modify his habits, to convert him. Jones says of the Ojibways that
there were occasionally bad ones among them, "but the good council of
the wise sachems and the mark of disgrace put upon unruly persons had
a very desirable influence."[199] The extreme form of punishment in
the power of the folk-moot of the Tuschinen is to be excluded from the
public feasts, and to be made a spectator while stoned in effigy and
cursed.[200] Sending a man to Coventry is in vogue among the Fejir
Beduins: one who kills a friend is so despised that he is never
spoken to again, nor allowed to sit in the tent of any member of the
tribe.[201]
The formulation of sentiment about an act depends also on the
repetition of the act. The act is more irritating, and the irritation
more widespread, with each repetition, and there is an increase of
the penalty for a second offense, and death for a slight offense when
frequently repeated: in the Netherlands stealing of linen left in the
fields to be bleached led to the death penalty for stealing a pocket
handkerchief. And with increasing definiteness of authority there
follows increasing definiteness of punishment; and when finally
the habit becomes fixed, conformity with it becomes a paramount
consideration, and a deed is no longer viewed with reference to its
intrinsic import so much as to its conformity or nonconformity with a
standard in the law: _summum jus, summa injuria_.
Morality, involving the modification of the conduct of the individual
in view of the presence of others, is already highly developed in
the tribal stage, since the exigencies of life have demanded the most
rigorous regulation of behavior in order to secure the organization
and the prowess essential to success against all comers. But the tribe
is a unit in hostile coexistence with other similar units, and its
morality stops within itself, and applies in no sense to strangers and
outsiders. The North American Indians were theoretically at war with
all with whom they had not concluded a treaty of peace. In Africa
the traveler is safe and at an advantage if by a fiction (the rite of
blood-brotherhood) he is made a member of the group; and similarly
in Arabia and elsewhere. The old epics and histories are full of the
praises of the man who is gentle within the group and furious without
it. The earliest commandments doubtless did not originally apply to
mankind at large. They meant, "Thou shalt not kill within the tribe,"
"Thou shalt not commit adultery within the tribe," etc. Cannibalism
furnishes a most interesting example of the prohibition of a practice
as applied to the members of the group, while extra-tribal cannibalism
continued unabated. And within the tribe there is a continuance of
this practice in the forms which do not interfere with the efficiency
and cripple the activity of the group. That is, while cannibalism
in general is prohibited, the eating of the decrepit, the aged,
of invalids, of deformed children, and of malefactors is still
practiced.[202]
But there gradually grew up a set of disapprovals of conduct as such,
whether within or without the group. In the _Odyssey_ Pallas Athene
says that Odysseus had come from Ephyra from Ilus, son of Mermerus:
"For even thither had Odysseus gone on his swift ship to seek a deadly
drug, that he might have wherewithal to smear his bronze-shod arrows:
but Ilus would in no wise give it to him, for he had in awe the
everlasting gods."[203] Here is an extension to society in general
of a principle which had been first worked out in the group; for
poisoning without the group was long allowed after it was disallowed
in the group. The case of poisoning is, indeed, a particularly good
instance of an unsatisfaction felt in the substitution of clandestine
methods for simple motor force in deciding a dispute, and affords
a clear example of an important relation between moral feeling
and physiological functioning. Animal as well as human society has
developed strategy alongside of direct motor expressions, but strategy
is only an indirect application of the motor principle. Co-ordination,
associative memory, will, judgment, are involved in strategy; it is
only a different mode of functioning. On the other hand, there is
a peculiar abhorrence of murder by night, poisoning, drowning in a
ship's hold, because, while all the physiological machinery for action
is on hand, there is no chance to work it. It is a most exasperating
thing to die without making a fight for it. The so-called American
duel is an abhorrent thing, because life or death is decided by a turn
of the dice, not on the racially developed principle of the battle to
the strong.
When, then, it is observed within the group that this, that, and
the other man has died of poison, each interprets this in terms of
himself, and no one feels safe. The use of poison is not only a means
of checking activities and doing hurt socially, but this form is most
foul and unnatural because it involves a death without the possibility
of motor resistance (except the inadequate opportunity on the
strategic side of taking precautionary measures against poison) and
a victory and social reward without a struggle. The group, therefore,
early adopts very severe methods in this regard. Death is the usual
penalty for the use of poison, and even the possession of poison,
among tribes not employing it for poisoning weapons, is punished.
Among the Karens of India, if a man is found with poison in his
possession, he is bound and placed for three days in the hot sun, his
poison is destroyed, and he is pledged not to obtain any more. If
he is suspected of killing anyone, he is executed.[204] Particularly
distressing modes of death, and other means of penalizing death by
poison more severely than motor modes of killing, were adopted. The
Chinese punish the preparation of poisons or capture of poisonous
animals with beheading, confiscation, and banishment of wife and
children. In Athens insanity caused by poison was punished with death.
The _Sachsenspiegel_ provides death by fire. In the lawbook of the
tsar Wachtang a double composition price was exacted for death by
poison. And in ancient Wales death and confiscation were the penalty
for death by poison, and death or banishment the penalty of the
manufacturer of poisons. The same quality of disapproval is expressed
in early law of sorcery, and it is unnecessary to give details of this
also. But, stated in emotional terms, both poison and sorcery, and
other underhand practices arouse one of the most distressing of the
emotions--the emotion of dread, if we understand by this term that
form of fear which has no tangible or visible embodiment, which
is apprehended but not located, and which in consequence cannot be
resisted; the distress, in fact, lying in the inability to function.
The organism which has developed structure and function through action
is unsatisfied by an un-motor mode of decision. We thus detect in the
love of fair play, in the Golden Rule, and in all moral practices a
motor element; and with changing conditions there is progressively
a tendency, mediated by natural selection and conscious choice, to
select those modes of reaction in which the element of chance is
as far as possible eliminated. This preference for functional over
chance or quasi-chance forms of decision is expressed first within
the group, but is slowly extended, along with increasing commercial
communication, treaties of peace, and with supernatural assistance, to
neighboring groups. The case of Odysseus is an instance of a moment
in the life of the race when a disapproval is becoming of general
application.
On our assumption that morality is dependent on strains, and that
its development is due to the advantage of regulating these strains,
we may readily understand why most of the canons of morality are
functions of the katabolic male activity. Theft, arson, rape,
murder, burglary, highway robbery, treason, and the like, are natural
accompaniments of the more aggressive male disposition; the male is
_par excellence_ both the hero and the criminal. But on the side of
the sex we might expect to find the female disposition setting the
standards of morality, since reproduction is even a greater part of
her nature than of man's. On the contrary, however, we find the male
standpoint carried over and applied to the reproductive process, and
the regulation of sex practices transpiring on the basis of force. In
the earliest period of society, under the maternal system, the woman
had her own will more with her person; but with the formulation of a
system of control, based on male activities, the person of woman was
made a point in the application of the male standpoint. "The wife,
like any other of the husband's goods and chattels, might be sold or
lent."[205] "Even when divorced she was by no means free, as the tribe
exercised its jurisdiction in the woman's affairs and the disposal of
her person."[206] Forsyth reports of the Gonds that
infidelity in the married state is ... said to be very rare;
and, when it does occur, is one of the few occasions when
the stolid aborigine is roused to the extremity of passion,
frequently revenging himself on the guilty pair by cutting off
his wife's nose and knocking out the brains of her paramour
with his ax.[207]
The sacrifice of wives in Africa, India, Fiji, Madagascar, and
elsewhere, upon the death of husbands, shows how completely the person
of the female had been made a part of the male activity. Where this
practice obtained, the failure of the widow to acquiesce in the habit
was highly immoral. Williams says of the strangling of widows by the
Fijians:
It has been said that most of the women thus destroyed are
sacrificed at their own instance. There is truth in this
statement, but unless other facts are taken into account it
produces an untruthful impression. Many are importunate to
be killed, because they know that life would henceforth be to
them prolonged insult, neglect, and want.... If the friends
of the woman are not the most clamorous for her death, their
indifference is construed into disrespect either for her late
husband or his friends.[208]
Child-marriages are another instance of the success of the male in
gaining control of the person of the female and of regulating her
conduct from his own standpoint. Girls were married or betrothed
before birth, at birth, at two weeks, three months, or seven years of
age, and variously, often to an adult, and their husbands were thus
able to take extraordinary precautions against the violation of their
chastity. On the other hand, it frequently happens, especially where
marriage by purchase is not developed, that the conduct of the girl
is not looked after until she is married; it becomes immoral only when
disapproved by her husband. In the Andaman Islands,
after puberty the females have indiscriminate intercourse
... until they are chosen or allotted as wives, when they are
required to be faithful to their husbands, whom they serve....
If any married or single man goes to an unmarried woman, and
she declines to have intercourse with him by getting up or
going to another part of the circle, he considers himself
insulted, and, unless restrained, would kill or wound
her.[209]
Under these conditions the rightness or wrongness of the sexual
conduct of the wife turned upon the attitude of the husband toward the
act. Hence a very general practice that the husbands prostituted their
wives for hire, but punished unapproved intercourse:
The chastity of the women does not appear to be held in much
estimation. The husband will, for a trifling present, lend
his wife to a stranger, and the loan may be protracted by
increasing the value of the present. Yet, strange as it may
seem, notwithstanding this facility, any connection of this
kind not authorized by the husband is considered highly
offensive and quite as disgraceful to his character as the
same licentiousness in civilized societies.[210]
When woman lost the temporary prestige which she had acquired in the
maternal system through her greater tendency to associated life, and
particularly when her person came more absolutely into the control of
man through the system of marriage by purchase, she also accepted and
reflected naïvely the moral standards which were developed for the
most part through male activities. Any system of checks and approvals
in the group, indeed, which was of advantage to the men would be of
advantage to the women also, since these checks and approvals were
safeguards of the group as a whole, and not of the men only. The
person and presence of woman in society have stimulated and modified
male behavior and male moral standards, and she has been a faithful
follower, even a stickler for the prevalent moral standards (the very
tenacity of her adhesion is often a sign that she is an imitator);
but up to date the nature of her activities--the nature, in short,
of the strains she has been put to--has not enabled her to set up
independently standards of behavior either like or unlike those
developed through the peculiar male activities.
There is, indeed, a point of difference in the application of
standards of morality to men and to women. Morality as applied to man
has a larger element of the contractual, representing the adjustment
of his activities to those of society at large, or more particularly
to the activities of the male members of society; while the morality
which we think of in connection with woman shows less of the
contractual and more of the personal, representing her adjustment to
men, more particularly the adjustment of her person to men.